


Embracement

by flylow



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Bullying, F/F, Happy Ending, Harassment, Homophobia, Slurs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-29
Updated: 2018-04-07
Packaged: 2019-04-14 08:25:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 18,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14132091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flylow/pseuds/flylow
Summary: Angela was quiet for a minute, looking away from Moira and towards the night sky, pensive. “I think you’re just… a bit much for some people.” A truth that had always seemed to hold—always too much of one thing, the wrong thing, and not enough of another. “So, what? It’s their loss.”





	1. 2038

**Author's Note:**

> This fic has been in the works since November and I've finally managed to get it all out! Moira's relationship with Angela is certainly in the spotlight, but I do feel it's a bit more of a character study than anything else.  
> Each chapter takes place during a different year of Moira's life, and is titled accordingly. The fic spans a total of 30 years. I've placed her birth year at 2028 if that helps situate things. 
> 
> In case you're anything like me and forget to read tags 90% of the time: warning for bullying, harassment, homophobia, and homophobic slurs. 
> 
> I should update every other day. Enjoy :)

It was day out when Moira rode through the shortcut running behind the schoolyard, but the world was veiled in muted colors by the clouds overhead. It had been raining all day. To watch raindrops run in rivulets down the windowpane and hear them patter over the rooftop always put her in a good mood. Outside, she smelled little else than the warmth of the earth rising up from the wetted dirt. 

She sped through puddles, experimentally, to see how far the water could splash up under her front tire. Her rain boots would have fared much better than the sneakers she had on, already soaked through at the toes, but she’d forgotten them by the back door this morning. She never liked to wear them.

Home, warm and dry, was less than a street away when she slowed to round the corner coming off from the trail. A bush rustled off to her right. She heard their voices before she saw them, before their feet found the frame of her bike, before she lost her balance and teetered off the seat.

Her body hit the ground hard.

She tried to stand. The slickness of mud between her fingers, beneath her feet, made it hard to find purchase against the earth. The boys kicked her bike out of the way. The sound of their laughing and jeering tapered enough for her to make out words between their braying.

“I told you guys to aim for the rocks.”

She’d narrowly missed a sizeable pile of them peaking out from the grass, just off the side of the road.

“Whatever. Looks like she’s covered in shit now.”

More laughter: idiotic, performative, entirely for her benefit.

“Did we get your only good pants dirty?”

They were one of her only pairs that fit her properly, that reached her ankles, that actually stayed on her hips without a belt or elastic band sewn in, that didn’t look baggy over her narrow frame. One of the boys kicked into the puddle beside her and more mud splashed against her legs.

“Freak.”

She didn’t give them the satisfaction of answering, didn’t look their way for risk of showing that she cared. Her bike was just out of reach. She pushed herself up off the ground with her head held high, and almost managed to stand before a hard kick to her side knocked her down again. It pulled the breath from her lungs.

“Where you going?”

She stayed quiet. Her body wanted to curl in around the pain blooming just under her ribs, but she willed it not to. 

“You ugly _and_ deaf now? Say something.”

More silence. A sharp tongue only ever made these things worse, and she was no good at dulling hers.

A new jolt of pain rattled up her shin where they kicked her again. Once, twice, three times. Her leg would bruise by morning.

“Alright, alright,” a voice of reason piped up among them. “We’ll get in trouble.”

The group stood still, and now she waited. It was usually only so long before they grew bored. Imbeciles thankfully didn't have much of an attention span for anything. She tried to wipe her hands clean against her pants, soiled as they were already.

“Fix her hair up before we go.”

The pack of them pounced, pushed her against the ground. They clawed and tugged against her as they scooped fistfuls of mud and caked them into her hair. It ran down her back and fell over her forehead and smeared onto her cheeks. The smell was stifling.

“Stop,” she said.

They laughed, but she could hardly see their faces anymore. They were only hands, covered in sludge, reaching and grabbing and pulling her every which way. She was suffocating.

“Get off of me.”

She lashed out and her fist found one of them square in the face with a hard smack. He reeled back, the others pulled away with him, and then time stood still. Blood dripped thickly down his nose and over his lip. Moira’s heart pounded in her ears. Her breathing was fast. Her eyes, wide and blue, were striking against the filth now covering her from the collar up.

She was over a head taller than any of the boys in her class, but certainly nowhere near as strong. That she had landed a punch surprised her almost just as much as it did them.

“You okay?”

“I’m fine.” He wiped his nose against his sleeve. “We were done with this loser anyways.” His foot found her leg, harder this time than any of the times before. He looked satisfied when she flinched away.

“Your hair looks a lot better like that, O’Deorain.”

It was all matted in mud, a dirty layer of brown drowning out any trace of the bright red beneath.

They snickered as they left, just as quickly as they’d come. Moira finally stood once she could no longer hear them down the street. She wiped away mud from where it had fallen down over her brow and on her face, then tried to do the same for what of it was stuck in her hair without much success.

She picked her bike up off the ground. One of its spokes had bent out of place, but it was otherwise unbroken. She walked it the rest of the way home, left it by the front door, and ran upstairs to the bathroom, where she peeled off her clothes and hung them to dry. In the shower, she let water wash color back into her hair as it lifted the smell of dirt and rain from her body.


	2. 2043

The locker room was never properly heated during winter months. Everything was cold: the metal of the lock against her fingers, the tiles beneath her socked feet, the air where it met her skin after she stripped off her clothes. Moira hurried to get dressed again. No sooner had she pulled on her shorts than she realized the shirt she’d left on the bench beside her had gone missing.

“Be my guest.” She extended her hand towards the thief in a silent demand the shirt be returned, but hesitated to face her fully, uncovered as she felt without it.

“It was just lying on the bench—finders keepers.”

Ridiculous. She’d worn the shirt nearly every class since the beginning of the year; there was no need to prove it was hers to begin with.

“But it’s way too big for you.” Another girl joined them. “Let me have it.”

The shirt flew the span of a few feet as it was tossed from one hand to another, and Moira raised her own to try and swipe it out of the air. She missed. There was something wicked in the way the girls smiled at the game of it.

“You’ve had your fun. Now hand it back.”

The impatient authority in her voice cut through the room and within a fraction of a second, she felt new pairs of eyes on her, attracted by the commotion. They made her feel small.

“What’s with your shirts being so damn big?” Pretenses crumbled to make way for something much more hostile than teasing.

“It’s not like she has anything to fill them out with.”

The weight of a gaze traveling up her body made her feel suddenly naked. She resisted the urge to cross her willowy arms over herself.

“I didn’t even know they made bras that size.”

The one she had on felt as though it may as well not have been there at all for how quickly her modesty was being picked apart. Goosebumps rose over her skin—from the cold, from the horrid discomfort of so much unwanted attention trained on her.

“Hey, are you really a girl, anyways?”

A snicker, echoed by several more. Her throat grew tight.

“Ten euro says she isn’t.”

A hand reached out to hook a finger into the waistband of her shorts, to try to pull the fabric away from her hips. She shoved the touch aside and startled a step back at the same time. A fleeting panic settled at the pit of her stomach when her shoulders met the lockers behind her. Trapped.

“Geez, calm down. I was kidding.” She held the hand Moira had batted away, implied with her tone that the reaction had been both unwarranted and abhorrently violent.

“Careful. She’ll think you’re coming onto her.”

They laughed, uncomfortable as the scrutiny they held her under morphed. It didn’t stop where it reached her gangly body—pale except for the soft dusting of freckles over her shoulders, which she’d never really felt self-conscious of before today—but carried on through to hit a buried nerve, something only half in bloom and still unnamed.

A hot feeling like shame and anger and discomfort stirred together rose up from the center of her chest. She felt it climb up her neck and fought the sting of tears. Protests sat on her tongue, but died there without her voice to carry them.

How insulting the suggestion was that she’d take even the most remote interest in any of them, idiotic as they were, anyway. Beneath her.

“Aw, look. Her face almost matches her hair.”

She could feel the blush up to her ears.

“Just keep the shirt, if you want something of mine so badly,” she managed.

It earned her the reaction she hoped for.

“Right. Like I want your gross gym clothes.”

The article could not have been more offensive. It was hurled promptly against her chest, and she couldn’t help but clutch it against her nakedness now that it was safely in her hands.

“Let’s go. We’re gonna be late.”

The room cleared out in a matter of seconds, but it took much longer than that for her to get dressed again, tense as she was. She slipped the shirt over her head with trembling hands, laced up her tennis shoes, and then stopped by the mirrors on her way out, to splash her face with water and make sure the flush on her skin had faded away.


	3. 2046

A girl from another town moved into her grade midway through high school. Moira only ever saw her in the afternoons, when she came by the library after the last bell and shared with her the table at the very back of the non-fiction section.

“Hey,” she piped up after weeks of silence. “Do you have Brennan for precalc?”

“I’m working on the trig problem right now.” She was just about finished with it.

“I can’t figure out the last part.” She scooted off her chair and slid over onto the one that would put them side-by-side.

And that was how it started—figuring out problems together at first, and then staying hours into the evening, talking about everything and nothing at all, sometimes until the librarian came to shoo them away.

From time to time, Moira picked her up in her car, and they drove around for what felt like hours—circling through neighboring towns until they stopped for food, or around nearby hills until they found a walking trail just to their liking.

But there were unspoken rules.

The first was to never speak at school outside the library. She never paid attention, or pretended not to, and Moira did, but never approached her. The second rule was never to bring up the first. Moira didn’t mind abiding, if it meant sharing so much good time when they were alone, because that was something rare.

* * *

She hadn’t planned on attending their debs, to keep up her trend of avoiding school-run events, but by the time the date began to close in, she found she might have a reason to want to go after all. 

“Are you going to the debs?” The question came out a bit too fast.

“Yeah, I am.” She smiled, and hope blossomed in Moira’s chest.

“Are you going with anyone?” Still cautious.

“Ah—yeah, John asked me. I said I’d go with him.” She didn’t seem displeased over it, but something of her tone made it sound an apology.

An empty feeling of disappointment, wishing she had thought to ask sooner, came over Moira.

Silence sat between them until she added, “But I think I’ll host a pre-party at my place. It won’t be too big—you should come. We’ll all go together.”

The thought might have normally been less than appealing, but she hadn’t expected the invitation, so receiving it made her happy, and a little bit brave. She smiled. She did a lot of smiling when they were together.

“Alright.”

* * *

A couple of cars were already pulled into the driveway when she got to the house, so she parked hers along the curb just off the front lawn. The front door was ajar and she pushed it open as she stepped across the threshold. For a party that ‘wouldn’t be too big’, there were more voices coming from inside than she had expected. 

“Oh—hey.” A girl who’d been in her history class last year almost bumped straight into her as she rounded the corner from the foyer into the living room. Evidently not expecting her.

At the center of the room, a few were busy trying to fix a flask to the inside of one girl’s thigh with masking tape; in the corner by the window, a few more scrolled through their phones and took pictures; by the sliding door to the backyard, a group of boys laughed loudly, making a ruckus over something.

There were whispers, but none of them soft enough to escape her hearing. It made her wonder if they did it on purpose.

She didn’t care what they all had to say about the way she looked. Her trousers hugged her legs just right, what with the way they slimmed down towards her ankles; her shirt, the color of deep plum, framed her shoulders perfectly; her tie was knotted to her satisfaction—she’d spent a good few tries at it; and her hair was fixed precisely the way she knew it looked best. She liked dressing up and dressing well, even if occasions to do so were hardly ever handed to her.

One or two people had the decency to come speak with her, but those conversations died quickly where she found them, and she started to feel a bit awkward, unwanted, out of place.

But then she stepped into the room, somehow late to her own party. She was pretty, in her deep blue dress, hair and face done up.

Moira felt relieved when their eyes met, when she smiled her way—until a handful of girls stepped between them.

“I have no idea who invited her, but—”

“I did, alright?”

A pause.

“Well, maybe you should’ve mentioned a dress code.”

“She’ll have to sit out of the photos.”

“I was born with a perfectly functional pair of ears,” Moira interrupted, and when they turned, it was the first time they’d bothered directly acknowledging her presence since she’d arrived at the party.

“You guys don’t have to make such a big deal out of it.” She stepped across the room, pushing past the group of them, to grab onto Moira by the sleeve of her shirt. “Come on.”

She let herself be pulled out of the living room, past the front door, up the stairs, and through one of the closed doors down the hallway. It was a bedroom, but a cursory look at the faces trapped in photos tacked over the desk told her it belonged to no one she knew. Her palms grew sweaty, and her heart thudded in her chest, just a bit nervous as to why they’d come here alone.

“Your friends are charming,” she managed drily.

A huff, as she looked back at her over her shoulder. “Well—what did you expect?”

Moira said nothing, and watched her dig through the closet on the other side of the room. “My sister should be about your size,” she considered. Her hand settled over something she liked, and she pulled it out with the sound of coat hangers rattling together. “You’d look gorgeous in this."

It was a dress, a nice one, probably too nice to be lent out without permission. A mix of confusion and upset seized her by the throat as the garment was held up against her body, as though to check if the size was right. It wasn’t quite. The hand pushing against the knot of her tie felt as though it’d choke her if it stayed there much longer. She backed away, offended.

“What’s wrong with what I have on?”

She didn’t care for the opinions of acquaintances, of classmates she only ever crossed in hallways—but here was someone different, or so she’d thought.

A sigh. “You know, your life would be so much easier if you didn’t insist on doing things differently all the time. It’s like you _try_ to stand out. And then you wonder why people give you a hard time.”

The words were cold and numbing and much too familiar and she only half registered the feeling of her heart sinking to the pit of her stomach.

“This is just how I am.” At a loss.

She said nothing, waited, looked at her as though staring long enough would give her a change of heart.

“ _I thought you liked me,_ ” was what Moira wanted to say. “If you’re… _embarrassed_ by me—the loss is all yours,” was what she managed instead. She wasn’t sure she sounded convinced. “I’m sorry I thought better of you.”

She recalled the woman standing in the mirror in her room before she’d left to come here, the one she’d fallen in love with the instant their eyes had met.  

“Moira—come on, it’s not like that.”

She backed away, and they were at a standstill.

Voices from downstairs carried up the stairwell and across the hallway as more people arrived.

“Enjoy the party tonight.”

She made for the door with the smallest hope that maybe she’d be stopped in her tracks by a quiet apology. She didn’t expect a strong hand against her collar would stop her instead.

John, was it? Flanked by his friend, who stood just behind him, whose name she couldn’t place, either.

He shoved her against the hallway wall, too close to the door, and its frame dug against her back. “Hey, hey, hey.” A fake smile twisted his features as he looked between her and the inside of the room she’d just left. “Don’t let me interrupt anything.”

“John—” The quiet voice behind her didn’t find room to finish.

“I was just leaving.”

An attempt at forcing his hand away only made him push her back twice as hard. He laughed when she struggled, and his breath was venom dyed with whiskey. She was a butterfly, pinned to a board, wings pierced in place by the tips of a spider’s legs. If she fidgeted, its web coiled tighter. So she stood perfectly still.

“You know,” he started. “I don’t get why they dress and act like guys.” No longer speaking to her, though now she wasn’t sure he’d ever addressed her in the first place.

“Can’t fight like us.” If his arm pressed any harder against her collar, her breathing would slow and then her heart would stop.

“Not fooling anyone, either. Not even themselves. Still girls, you know.” There wasn’t much of her to see, because the shirt and the pants hid her softer edges behind their straight lines, but his gaze still made her uncomfortable. “Girls still like what girls like.”

He stepped closer, any closer still, and he’d be pressed against her—

“Alright, _enough_.” Moira couldn’t see her, but her voice came from just a couple feet behind her shoulder. It reined him to a stop, and she felt the pent up air in her lungs leave her in a single breath when his arm eased. “You’re being an ass.”

“She try anything?”

That must have been what he’d come upstairs for, to check up on them after he’d seen them run up. Insecure. Perhaps there was satisfaction to be had in making someone so vile feel that way. But the implication that she'd ever force herself on someone, as he was forcing himself on her now, made that brief satisfaction curdle and sour in her stomach. His hand still pinned her in place as he awaited an answer. It was difficult to swallow with it there.

“Don’t be stupid.”

She sounded offended, revolted at the thought, and maybe that hurt Moira more than anything, adding insult to injury.

As soon as his hold slackened, she peeled herself from where she’d stuck to the wall and flew to the stairs without waiting to hear another word. A dreadful quiet filled the house, despite everyone in it, when she made it back into the foyer. Eyes followed her out the door.

A handful of people stood out on the lawn, but they didn’t look her way as she walked the distance from the porch to where she’d parked.

And then she saw it, in dark red letters painted across the back windshield of her car.

_Dyke_

Too shocked for a proper reaction, simultaneously unsurprised, she raised her hand to touch the word. The color kissed off on her fingers, but remained stained onto the glass. Lipstick.

She rubbed it off against her palm as she moved around the car to get into the front seat. She didn’t bother with her seat belt. She jammed the key into the ignition and pulled away from the curb as soon as she could.

When she got home, she left the car out in the driveway while she ran inside to find a bottle of rubbing alcohol and an old rag. The word wiped away so surprisingly easily it was insulting. After just two passes of the cloth, there wasn’t a trace of it left.

Aside from allowing her to put together her outfit, bothering with the party had been a complete waste of time. And all those hours spent sharing parts of herself with someone so underserving—they had been a waste of time, too.

She hung up her clothes once she got to her room and ruffled her hair free from the product holding it together. In nothing but a soft t-shirt and underwear, she buried herself among the blankets and pillows piled onto her bed. The sheets were fresh and carried with them the faintest smell of laundry. Her hand reached for one of the books she had stacked in a pile on her nightstand. Wilde, at least, was always good company. She read until she fell asleep, too tired to make sense of words pressed between pages.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Our favorite physician features in all future chapters :) Thanks for being patient.


	4. 2065

“I really don’t think I’ve been invited to this." 

The back of the cab they’d called smelled like faux leather and pine freshener. They’d only left the conference five minutes ago, and would be at their destination in five more, according to the GPS guiding their driver’s way.

“That makes you my plus-one, then,” Angela said, somehow both disdainful and suggestive at once.

Moira scoffed, looked out the window. They’d certainly dressed like a couple. Their coordination—the maroon of her shirt to Angela’s dress, and the white of her tie to her shawl—had been pure accident, even if Angela’s accusatory tone when they’d met up suggested it might not have been.

“So kind to make me suffer with you.”

The conference itself had been more than fine—it was the atmosphere of academic after-parties that she didn’t care for. The following things she could already guess: there would be at most five women, discounting the two of them, and definitely no one younger than Angela.  

“You’re free to take the cab home once we get there.”

Perhaps the good doctor had yet to grow bothered of these waters. Only a year had passed since they’d met at Overwatch, since rivalry and respect had reared their heads, since their egos had led them to pretend they had nothing in common, when, in fact, they shared far too much. Having been head of surgery in a world-renowned hospital didn’t make Angela any less new at all of this.

Moira wasn’t her mentor. She’d never trained her, or supervised her. Every project was and had always been collaborative, on equal footing. But there was something, still—something possessive, protective, coveting, in the way Moira hovered in her orbit. She pushed, challenged, and advised where there was room to sway. There was more potential to be tapped, more to Angela’s brilliant mind, than the majority of people could possibly fathom. And she still had infinitely much to learn, still so far to grow.

So she was glad, actually, to come with Angela to the party, if only to lend her arm if she wanted rest against it. The thought of any of the doctors they’d met that night—a tall microbiologist, with broad shoulders and an even broader smile for Angela, arbitrarily came to mind—trying to fill that place for her made something unpleasant twist in her gut.

“No, I’ll stay.”

The party was as predicted. The host was a neurosurgeon who’d led, to his credit, one of the most interesting panels of the conference that evening. His home was drab in comparison to his research, Moira thought. Expensive, but not particularly homey or tasteful, with furniture that looked twice as old as he was and carpets that bordered on gaudy with all their rich colors and patterns.

The study was the only room of note, and Moira stopped in it a while to appreciate the massive wall-to-wall bookshelves before she went on wandering through the house, trying with relative success not to fall into more conversation than social convention required. She would have liked to speak more with one of the professors she’d met earlier, a woman from London whose panel had been on metagenetics, but she wasn’t at the party.

Thankfully, Angela—wherever it was she’d disappeared off to—grasped the subtleties of genetics research more than adequately enough that she could bounce ideas off her later.

She returned to the living room to find the party had doubled in size since she’d escaped down the hall and up the stairs, and whatever hopes she had of locating her companion for the night died at once.

A tall, slim set of double doors left ajar beckoned her instead, and she neared them until she could feel a soft breeze creeping from outside. She let it guide her out onto the balcony. Empty. Perfect.

She half-sat against the railing and the stone was pleasantly cool against the back of her thighs, warm as it was out. She lifted the jacket she’d hung over her arm and patted it down in search of the pocket she’d slipped her flask into. A generous swig of whiskey, woody, spicy, and warm as sunlight, passed her lips and fell down her throat. She tucked the flask into the pocket of her pants, instead of back into her jacket, as soon as she was finished.

Just in time for company.

“It’s a wonder I can’t keep track of you when you’re a foot taller than anyone else in the room.”

Never mind that Angela had been the one to saunter off alone.

Moira smiled. “Were you looking for me?” Her tone was teasing when she continued, “I thought I was ‘exhausting to talk to’.”

It was something Angela had told her months and months ago, when she’d still been trying at disliking her, before the act had started to fade, despite her best efforts, it had seemed.

Moira, for her part, had always liked Angela, had never pretended not to. Young, idealistic, and a bit naïve for it—but sharp, dedicated, and not as unwilling to bend the rules as she pretended. Sometimes, Moira wondered how far she might be coaxed before deciding to break them, too.

Angela rolled her eyes, and bridged the space between them so she could look out over the balcony. “Not in the same way as everyone else here.”

“The good way, then?”

Another eye roll. At this rate, Moira thought she might be able to set a record tonight. There was something about all of Angela’s little frustrated, exasperated, impassioned microexpressions when she was riled up, that was so much more charming than the fake smiles she’d been plastering to her face all night.

“Sometimes I feel like no one else can hold a good conversation,” she admitted before taking a generous sip of her wine.

Because Moira challenged, it was in her nature.

“You’re smart,” Angela continued. “You know—actually smart, innovative. Not just… opening your mouth to regurgitate stale academics.”

Moira’s lips stretched with a grin, cat-like, pulled wide by the upturned corners of her mouth. “Go on.”

A third eye roll—though she was starting to smile, now, just barely. A real smile.

“I rather like Angela after a few glasses of wine,” she said. “I should see her more often.”

“This is my second.” She raised the half empty glass cradled in her right hand.

“After one and a half drinks,” Moira amended.

There was number four.

Moira cleared her throat, trying to smile less, before continuing, “Sorry, I hadn’t meant to interrupt. Please, go on.” She waved her hand in front of her, as though the motion would pull more from Angela. “You’d left off at… smart, innovative…?”

“An arrogant ass.”

Moira laughed, couldn’t help herself. “So the list is limited to our commonalities.”

She fished for the flask in her pocket, pressed its mouth to hers, and tilted her head back to rob it of its contents. A small shake assured her there was nothing left.

“And you were commenting on _my_ drinking?” She latched onto the opportunity for a change in topic.

“It was hardly half full when we got here.” The flask went back into her pocket after she screwed the top shut. “How else do you get through an evening spent among people who dislike you?”

“They don’t _dislike_ you.”

“They don’t like me, either.”

Angela was quiet for a minute, looking away from Moira and towards the night sky, pensive. “I think you’re just… a bit much for some people.” A truth that had always seemed to hold—always too much of one thing, the wrong thing, and not enough of another. “So, what? It’s their loss.”

“Mm.”

“You’re yourself, at least, and that’s more than most people can claim to.” She turned to look back at the party through the little square glass panes over the double doors. “It’s fucking refreshing.”

“Can I find out how much you swear once you’re on to glass three?”

Number five. But Angela let silence fall between them rather than deign an answer to her teasing, wouldn’t let her deflect to another empty topic so easily.

Moira thought that Angela was much the same—always herself, always genuine, or if not always, at least as often as anyone could reasonably manage within the bounds of sanity. Another similarity to tally between them. But anyone would be stupid not to notice that they were just as opposite as they were similar in this realm, too.

“Some people are luckier than others,” Moira said finally. “The whole world doesn’t shirk away when they act themselves.”

Angela was far from perfect—she was a world of imperfections, maybe a whole solar system’s worth—but somehow all her imperfections stacked acceptably. Or maybe it was that all her perfections stacked such that anything less was negligible, invisible, even, to the outside eye.

“Don’t be dramatic,” she said, choosing not to take it personally, as Moira realized she very well could have. Maybe she understood that that hadn’t been her intention. Angela paused. “The whole _academic_ world, maybe.” She tried a smile, but it was cautious. “But not the whole world.”

“Most people,” Moira settled for. “It’s nothing new.” Her voice was so quiet, like she hadn’t meant to say it aloud.

Worry that she’d drank too much suddenly seeped in. She sighed and turned to face out in the same direction Angela had earlier, looking away and closing the last of the distance between them as she did.

When Angela leaned closer, their arms brushed together. “I hope you know I’m not ‘most people’.” That her voice was so tentative betrayed the honesty in her statement.

Moira smiled.

“Of course.” Her easy air of confidence returned. “I’d never dream of abasing our brilliant Dr. Ziegler with a suggestion to the contrary.”

She rolled her eyes for the sixth time since she’d joined her on the little balcony, but Moira knew she loved the flattery—didn’t need to see the soft pink rising in her cheeks to confirm it—because it was something she loved, too. The game they played of bruising and elevating each other’s egos. The pleasure they took in doing so. Tense and comfortable at the same time, as of late.

Angela’s insistence on honesty tonight, though, was less familiar.

“So long as you know,” she said, quiet.

Moira smiled, hoped she knew she wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity to sink her teeth in this. The drink made her a little bit bolder than she otherwise might have been.

“What?” She smiled even wider, and it was audible in her voice when she leaned closer, when her words brushed against the shell of Angela’s ear as she spoke, low and soft. “That you like me, _aingeal_?”

Seven.

She pulled back, standing to her full height so that Angela had to tilt up her head to meet her eyes again. If there was an eighth time, she swore to herself she’d kiss her right there, right where they stood on the old neurosurgeon’s balcony.

The whiskey had made her blood too warm.

She forced herself away, away from Angela’s gaze, because it was all too incautious, and there was no doubt in her mind that her hunger came ever closer to being laid bare the longer she looked down into those pretty, curious, blue eyes. The door and all its windows caught her attention again.

“Doctors,” she started, “make surprisingly horrid gossips, in my experience. Did you know?”

Angela cleared her throat and followed her gaze into the room. It seemed another world from where they stood. She hummed in agreement.

“Perhaps too eager to tarnish a reputation.”

Let whispers chase her to her grave, but Angela was all of twenty-six, and if they were to share the same fate, Moira wouldn’t let it start so soon, and certainly not over something like this. She deserved much better.

Not to mention if she did lean down, if she did taste her lips—made of maple or honey, she was certain, probably too slick and sweet—only for Angela to back away. Flirting was one thing, meaning it, another. She’d learned that lesson the hard way, and wanted nothing less than to make Angela uncomfortable.

Besides, an onlooker could spin a terrible story. Her own reputation wasn’t irredeemable yet. She still hoped to drag it from the water if she could.

No, this wasn’t the time or place, if ever she let herself consider Angela again, as it was inevitable that she would.

“I’m tired,” Angela said. It cut through the quiet of the night, through her train of thought.

Her hand found Moira’s and brushed between her long fingers, just for an instant, as though for purchase, as she stood up from where she leaned against the railing.

“Might be the wine.”

“Mm.”

An old mechanical clock hung on the living room wall, framed by one of the door’s windowpanes from where she stood. Moira read the time.

“Past ten,” she reported. “Were you finished here?” A nod towards the sound of all the muffled voices melding together inside gave the question context.

“I think so.” Angela walked idly to the door only to stop once her hand just met its handle. She stood up straight, heels pressed together, a picture of poise—except for that sly little smile that was so unmistakably Angela that it almost ruined the act altogether. Pure charm redeemed it.

She offered her arm, and added in a little bow for good measure. “Shall we, Ms. O’Deorain?”

Now Moira rolled her eyes. The space between them narrowed with hardly two of her strides, and then dissolved completely when she placed her hand to the small of Angela’s back.

“The Ph.D. isn’t for nothing.”

Angela’s smile turned smug, like she’d known she wouldn’t have been able to let the title sit uncorrected. She rolled her eyes, though— _eight_ —like it hadn’t been bait in the first place. Moira’s hand pressed insistently against the soft red fabric of her dress, to move her forward, to put an end to this interlude.

“Doctor O’Deorain,” Angela corrected herself. And maybe it was in part the _way_ she said it, but she couldn’t remember the last time the title felt as satisfying as it did falling from her lips. Gratification made her chest swell.

Moira traced a path halfway up Angela’s spine with the hand resting at her back, so light the touch might not have been there at all. And for a second, Angela shivered, she was sure. Her eyes were cast down, not meeting hers, but her arm still stood extended in silent invitation.

When Moira twined her own with it, she looked up, finally, under pretty, heavy lashes. They were dark now, dressed with mascara, not their soft natural brown with ends so light they were almost blond. Moira thought that with their naked coloring—she knew it from days and nights spent hunched close together over research reports and messy equations—her eyes were all the more striking.

Angela’s hand shifted to settle just above the crook of her elbow, fingers wrapped over her bicep, and her gaze held hers throughout. Warm, grounding, receptive. It was in the spaces of her Angela filled that Moira saw them fit together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for the comments/kudos, guys. They're super appreciated :)


	5. 2066

Above the lab desks pushed to the far side of the room overhung a set of wall-mounted shelves. A cardboard storage box containing the report files Moira was looking for sat on the topmost of these, an easy reach for her even though most might have needed a stepping ladder. Or, if they were anything like Angela, might have hopped up on the desk for it. 

The paper-packed box slid off the corner of the shelf as she pulled it down, and landed heavily against her chest. As she bent to set it onto the desktop, a soft thud and the hollow clatter of plastic let her know she’d knocked something over in the process.

Her hand shot out reflexively to keep the tub from rolling off the table. White powder fell over her hand, her wrist, to the corner of her shirt and down the top of her thigh. She slammed the open container upright against the table again before backing away.

“Shit,” she hissed, with more exasperation than panic.

She was already halfway across the room, pulling her tie loose and unbuttoning her shirt, when a voice came from the other end of the lab. “What?”

“Some… incompetent didn’t screw the damned lid on the tricaine.”

“Is the spill bad?” Angela sounded mildly concerned. She walked closer, Moira could tell by the click of her steps against the linoleum tiles. Her fingers suddenly felt heavy as they passed down along each of the buttons of her shirt.

“Hardly—caught most of it before it could fall everywhere.”

Only when it was clear Angela was making for the desk, and not for where she stood, did breathing become easy again.

“I’ll clean it up,” she said.

Moira peeled the shirt back off her arms and let it fall to the ground. She kicked off her shoes, socks, and hardly bothered with the zipper of her pants before pulling them down and adding them to the pile.

The floor of the shower was cold beneath her feet. She braced herself as she yanked the handle down. The water was even colder. It raised goose bumps over her arms and made all the muscles in her back go tense. It fell over her eyes and soaked through her underwear as she stood there, hoping to get used to the temperature with time. Just her luck for this to have happened in the dead of winter, when all the pipes on base were close to frozen.

The sound of the water rushing over her ears and splashing down around her feet kept her from hearing much of anything else going on in the room. She brushed her hand back through her hair and dared look over at where Angela stood by the mess she’d made—already almost through with cleaning it up.

A word of thanks sat on her lips, but she held it back at the last second. She was rather comfortable with having as little attention drawn to herself as possible at the moment. She imagined the horror of having to strip down during working hours, when researchers and assistants and interns milled about the lab incessantly, and was partly thankful that this had happened now of all times, with only Angela to bear witness. But that presented with a different conundrum altogether, because Angela—well, because Angela was Angela.

She disappeared behind her again, down the other end of the room, somewhere her eyes couldn’t track without her turning her head, so Moira stayed still, trying not to think much on anything. But then Angela was back again, closer than before, and heading closer still.

“It’s been long enough,” she told her.

She held a lab coat between her hands. Moira pulled at the handle again and the flow of water abruptly dried out. It felt even colder now with the air nipping at her bare skin, and a lump rose in her throat as she turned every so slightly in Angela’s direction. She tried to calm the nervous thrumming of her heart, to untangle the knot forming at the pit of her stomach, by reminding herself that Angela was a damn doctor—that she’d be the last person to flinch at the sight of a mostly-naked coworker, and probably thought nothing of it.

Her eyes remained trained away from her body, even as she unfolded the lab coat, held it open, and stepped forward to drape it gently over her shoulders. Clinically professional. As relieving as the lack of attention was, Moira found it partly insulting, too. She realized she would have preferred to see Angela interested, affected, flustered, or at the very least embarrassed, so that she didn’t have to feel like she was suffering through things alone.

A shiver rattled her by the shoulders as she slipped her arms through the lab coat’s sleeves, hardly long enough to reach halfway down her forearms—must have been the largest size left—and it was then that something beyond Doctor Ziegler came to life. Angela stepped closer to help close the coat over her chest, desperate to ward off the cold, as though she were the one affected.

She possessed an urge to care and nurture, so strong it bordered on a need, and even though Moira had told her before that it would be her undoing, she found it wasn’t so unwelcome a trait at the moment. The warmth of her hands through the fabric of the ill-fitted lab coat, quickly growing wet as it clung to her skin, was enough to stop her shaking. When Angela finally looked up at her, she swore she saw the softest tint of pink, so pretty over her cheeks—couldn’t be sure with how dim the lights were on this side of the room—and she wondered if her own face was warm, too.

“Thank you,” she said softly, and she felt confidence return to her voice. She smiled as she stepped from the shower and Angela cleared her throat.

“Sorry, there weren’t any towels.”

Her words spilled out quickly.

Moira looked down at the sorry pile of clothes, still partly dusted white with powder, before she leaned down to scoop them up. “I’ll dry.”

When she stood to her full height again, Angela was smiling like she was trying not to laugh. Like the awkward tension of the situation had finally caught up with her.

“What?”

“Nothing.” Mirth hugged the edges of her words. “I’m sure all those frogs you sedated are laughing at you right now.”

Moira humphed. “I can tell you who won’t be laughing—whoever decided to ignore safety protocols,” she grumbled.

“Good luck getting anyone to fess up, considering half of staff gets nervous just seeing you walk into the room.”

“We could get it out of them. Be the good cop?” She raised an eyebrow.

“How about you put on some clothes before planning an interrogation routine on _my_ lab assistants?”

Her eyes flickered down to the lab coat. Moira’s hands tightened around the bundle of clothes she’d forgotten she was holding as she remembered her state of undress, and noticed the uncomfortable chill of the air all over again.

“Right.”

“Do you have anything to change into?”

“Thankfully.”

There was an old shirt in her locker along with a spare pair of slacks that she didn’t wear anymore, because its zipper had snagged irreparably. It would do for the moment. What she didn’t have was a fresh set of underwear, but there were Overwatch-issue stocks on base—they’d have to do, too.

The halls were dark and empty, so she dared change where she stood in front of her locker. The shirt was white, gently wrinkled, and softened by time. One of its upper buttons was missing, though she couldn’t remember when she’d lost it, so she left the first two past the collar open.

Her shoes still lay beside the shower where she’d slipped them off. She padded back to the lab in fresh socks emblazoned with Overwatch’s logo at the ankles. She cursed the turn of events—cursed whoever left the tricaine out for her to spill, cursed herself for not noticing it in time. Maybe the mistake would have been avoided altogether had she gotten any amount of sleep in the past twenty or so hours.

Angela was running on just as little rest as she was. The mug sitting atop her desk was empty, and Moira hooked her fingers about its handle as she passed her by on the way to the coffee maker. The pot it cradled was still acceptably warm. She poured them a cup each without bothering with a fresh brew. Two sugars in Angela’s, one cream in her own.

“Thanks. For cleaning the mess.”

She set the mug down back in its place and ceramic clicked against cold resin.

“Mm.” Angela, distracted by the documents before her, spared her half a glance before pulling the coffee closer with a muttered “thanks” and taking a sip. “I’m glad it was just tricaine. No stinging, burning, itching, anything?”

Moira was already walking back towards the scene of the spill when the question left her lips. It was quiet enough, with just the two of them, not to need to turn her head or raise her voice as she answered, “The pain’s horrid. Afraid I require immediate amputation.”

She heard Angela mumble something beneath her breath, too soft for her to catch, but her tone alone, falsely exasperated, made Moira smirk.

“There’s a gigli saw in the nearest OR—since you’re fond of self-experimentation.”

Somewhere between biting and playful. Just one of those things Angela never seemed to let go of, always seemed to bring up when the opportunity came. Self-experimentation was better than no experimentation, Moira reasoned. But the argument had been had too often, and without compromise, for either to justify pouring effort into making the other yield anymore.

Sometimes, the look on Angela’s face when disapproval dropped away—real concern mixed with something quietly sad—raised voices in Moira’s head that almost convinced her to reconsider her threshold for risk-taking. It made something tug at her chest.

By the time she thought to answer, it had probably been too long for it to matter anymore. Her mind felt fuzzy, but a glance at the clock told her it was just past 4 a.m., which meant there were hours left to work. She downed half of her tepid coffee in one go and then opened the box she’d meant to search before the accident had pulled her off course.

Files, and files, and more files of research notes and communications and scribbled reports that hadn’t been logged into the system. Angela’s were easily distinguished thanks to her scrawl, and that Moira had become intimate with its curves and edges by now made the exercise of picking out her work nearly effortless. She marked the place of a few papers as she went along, and then pulled each of them out from their respective stacks to form a new pile for revision.

First signs of morning had spilled into the lab through the wall-to-wall windows at her back by the time she’d cross-referenced and annotated and recalculated to her satisfaction. The sound of her stool dragging back against the floor as she stood felt disproportionally loud as it rattled the quiet. She collected her work in one hand and her pencil in the other.

“I have something.”

She slid the papers in front of Angela as she relocated to her side. It pulled her out of whatever trance she’d been stuck in, and she straightened her posture with a small stretch before taking the stack from her hand.

Moira pulled the chair nearest Angela’s a few feet over so they could share the desk. Angela could have scooted over to make more room, but she didn’t. Moira’s long legs had to shift about, so as not to tangle with hers, as she got comfortable in her seat.

“The modifications are minimal enough that the newer nanite models should still be viable,” Moira explained as she led Angela’s eye to a relevant line of notes across the page.

She studied them a while and Moira watched as she bit her lip and knit her brow the way she always did when she was deep in thought. She was tired, though, and her eyes weren’t so sharp, weighed down by the shadows starting to hug their corners.

Finally, “This calculation…?”

“Ah.” Moira smiled and pushed Angela’s hand aside with her own.

She relinquished her grip to let her leaf quickly through the pages, so she could pull one free and bring it to the front.

“Something I can’t assume all credit for.”

Recognition flitted across Angela’s features. “This is from… ages ago.”

“A couple months hardly make it ancient. You were on the right track, but something…”

“None of the results were consistent.” A note of frustration seeped into her voice. “The nanites kept rejecting. I scrapped it after a couple days.”

“Well, I reworked things a bit. It was essentially there to begin with.” Angela was brilliant enough without her. But they invariably did their best work collaboratively. And Moira thought that this might have been an inadvertence she would have committed at Angela’s age, too.

“Hmm.” She smiled, proud.

“The results are consistent now. I’m even tempted to skip more trials…” She pulled out another few pieces of paper from Angela’s grasp, and these she splayed out over the desktop. “But we may as well err on the side of caution.”

She let her pore over her results a while.

“If this were anyone else’s work, I’d say I should reread it when I’m running on more than just coffee, but…” She didn’t close the thought as she got to the bottom of the last page, only shook her head and cleared her throat. “It’s too good to want to second guess right now.”

There was still more to polish, though, more for another night now that it was well into the morning.

“I wish I’d had more time on my hands today,” Moira said, looking to the clock on the wall facing them. She sounded vaguely annoyed when she added, “and less tricaine…"

She absentmindedly reached for where she’d spilled the irritant over her hand, and felt a phantom prickle there as she remembered the dull itch of it when she’d stood beneath the water. A gentle, almost absent-minded touch joined her own against her forearm. Angela’s hand rested over the light fabric of her shirt.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to look at it? It’s the second time now you’ve touched it since you sat down.” If that was so, Moira hadn’t done it consciously.

“Unscathed,” she assured her quickly. She pulled her sleeve up a little just to prove it. Angela ran her fingers casually about her wrist and her eyes flitted up to meet hers as she did so, testing for something, waiting for a reaction that would prove she might be lying. But Moira felt nothing—nothing except for a small shiver, easily staved off, prompted by Angela’s touch, so soft and light it almost tickled.

Finally, Angela seemed satisfied and pulled away.

“Alright.”

Moira rolled her sleeve back down and tried to regain interest in the notes splayed out before them, but Angela’s gaze remained on her, palpable.

She shifted to sit with her legs tucked beneath her on the chair, and then unfolded them again. Her shoulder brushed against Moira’s arm an instant as she fidgeted. And then she was pretending—or trying, Moira wasn’t sure—to read through the results again along with her. But still she stared.

It was unnerving.

“What?” she asked, maybe too abruptly.

“What?” Angela parroted.

“I promise the results are easier to grasp once you’ve actually read them.”

Angela looked at her blankly.

Moira elaborated, “Though I understand I’m terribly captivating.”

“Sorry.” She cast her eyes down. “I didn’t mean to distract you.” Her tone made that hard to believe. There was something falsely coy in Angela’s voice, in the way she refused now to look her way, but still seemed to await her response.

“Seems I’m not the one most distracted.”

“I’m just not used to seeing you like this.” There was a smile in her voice. “Less than put together.”

Moira ran her hand through her hair, feathery soft now that the product in it had been washed away. Angela tracked the movement with her eyes.

“I can’t do anything for the hair,” she said, artificially apologetic. “Would you like me to put the tie back on? Reinstate some normalcy in your lab, Dr. Ziegler, so we can get back to work?”

“I like your hair.” Her response was quick, genuine. Moira swore she saw her fingers twitch in her lap, like she was restraining herself. “And no—you don’t have to.”

“You don’t like the tie, then?” She raised an eyebrow, mostly teasing, but Angela answered in earnest.

“I do. I like it.”

Her gaze fell from her face to the open edges of her shirt, where her tie normally sat at the hollow of her throat, where the delicate lines of her collarbones were now bared.

She raised her hand to play with the edge of her collar. Moira stilled as she fingered at the spot where that lone button had come loose, saying nothing, watching her, waiting. Angela’s tongue peaked past her lips to wet them before she spoke.

“It’s nice without, too, though.” Her tone was simple, as though she may as well have been reading off the notes in front of her. “It makes you look… less imposing. I guess.” Her fingertips slid past the fabric of her shirt and flirted with the edges of her collarbones.

Moira drew in a breath, tense, that she hoped was slight enough to escape Angela’s notice. But she wasn’t stopping, and the touch, still noncommittal, yet completely unambiguous, made her heart knock against her chest.

“Do I impose upon you?”

The question was genuine, perhaps a little bit shy. Her voice felt thick.

She’d left little room for Angela to wonder as to her preferences, or so she thought, given all the time they’d spent together—half-deliberate comments, and sometimes behaviors slipped with less intent. As though the way she dressed and held herself wasn’t a dead giveaway. Something in it all was still scary, though, because she wasn’t entirely sure just yet, had read women wrong before.

Angela laughed, sharp and quick. But she searched her face for an answer, as though to better understand the question, and Moira saw how the soft blue of her eyes thinned away, gave way to black, the more she drank her in.

“No.” Her voice was small, but not timid. Neither was the decisive press of her hand against her chest.

Moira straightened in her chair and leaned closer, until Angela could feel the weight of her height as she looked down at her. She stayed there a few heartbeats—counted them in her chest as well as she knew Angela could count them there, too—as though inviting her to change her answer, expecting her to.

She stared at her with restraint unbridled, imaged, as she so often did despite half-hearted efforts, Angela praying in pretty whispers under her fingers. And Angela’s eyes fluttered, half-lidded, looking up from under long lashes, as she read in Moira’s gaze alone all the ways she might unravel her.

The press of her palm remained, unwavering.

Moira reached to cradle her face between her hands. And she was so gentle, at first, like Angela might have been made of glass. Like she was something precious. As though one false press against her skin, against the edge of her jaw, might make her shatter to dust. And then she’d be nothing but cutting crystal sand slipping through her fingers.

So she was gentle, and Angela was soft in kind.

Her mouth tasted like the stale cup of coffee she’d finished more than an hour ago. Her bottom lip was chapped, but her tongue was soft as silk. Her kisses were slow and sleepy and quick to turn breathy—puffing warm air against Moira’s lips every time they pulled apart.

A muted sound at the back of her throat made warmth drip down Moira’s chest and settle low in her stomach. The realness of Angela in their lips together, still together, made her seem less fragile now. One of Moira’s hands slipped up through her hair so she could drag her nails close to her scalp.

Her fingers tangled there, and tugged, a sharp contrast to the gentle brush of her thumb against her cheek. She drew Angela’s pillowy bottom lip between hers and bit—just to hear a little noise loose from her after her breath hitched.

Both of Angela’s palms laid flat against her collar and pushed back the edges of her shirt and glided towards her shoulders. Cold from hours spent typing and penciling numbers at her desk. The shock of it made Moira pause an instant.

“Sorry,” she said, conscious of the bite at the tips of her fingers, yet she made no move to retract them. She let her hands drift up around her neck, so she could play tentatively with the soft hair at the back of her head.

Moira didn’t mind, only cared that Angela’s lips had pulled away and that she was missing the warmth of her. She shifted in her chair. In the small space allotted by the narrow underbelly of Angela’s desk, she pressed their legs closer together, slotted her own as much as she could between Angela’s, a suggestion.

“What for?”

Angela was hardly given pause to answer. Moira chased after the color in her cheeks as she skimmed her lips down to the corner of her jaw. The kisses she placed there were slow and soft before she moved lower, to her neck, where they grew wet and warm. With every noise they coaxed from Angela, each less controlled than the last, Moira felt herself grow hot.

How delightful it was to watch—to _hear_ her self-restraint unravel.

Angela titled her head for her, pliant at her touch. Moira nipped hard enough to redden, but not enough to mark—just enough to make her gasp and squirm.

“Harder.” One of Angela’s hands fisted into her hair, but her demand was softened by the arousal in her voice.

Moira laughed, breath warm against her. She found the heat of her pulse with her lips, her teeth, and then laved a line up to the delicate spot just below her ear. She rolled her tongue against her skin. She sucked, and once she’d started, didn’t stop until Angela whimpered beneath her.

“If I mark you any more,” she said lowly, close to her ear. “I don’t think it’ll be terribly hard for anyone to guess who fucked Dr. Ziegler.” Process of elimination—there were only so many people willing to work in the labs overnight.

Angela huffed, derisive as possible in her compromised state. “You always do get ahead of yourself.”

“Apologies.” Moira pulled back to meet her eyes, and saw Angela was blushing more strongly than before. “It’s just—you certainly _sounded_ , just now, like you might want—”

She shut her up with a kiss, and Moira’s sentence died on something very much like a moan. Angela kissed her again and again. Moira found her hips and held her there.

“I can’t believe you waited so long,” Angela muttered close against her when she stopped.

Moira laughed. “How medieval of me. Should have made things clear when I first introduced myself—‘Nice to meet you, Dr. Ziegler. You’re as beautiful as you are brilliant. Would you let me bend you over my desk, please?’”

Not that it had been her first thought after their meeting, but she’d have been lying if she’d said it was a recent one.

Angela rolled her eyes, but the color dusting her cheeks deepened. “I meant _today_ ,” she elaborated. “This had to happen—what?” She paused to look at the time. “A quarter hour before the labs open.”

“Why am _I_ responsible for initiating?” More teasing than anything. She was flattered to see Angela impatient.

“I’m just saying, since you ended up initiating in the first place…”

Moira wasn’t even certain that had been the case.

Angela trailed off as Moira’s hands snuck past the hem of her shirt, to stroke at the sensitive skin at her sides with the tips of her fingers. Angela sucked in a breath.

“You know, I can work with fifteen minutes…”

“Confident.”

“I’m good at what I like.”

Angela laughed, but it was shaky. Moira’s touch flirted with her sides, still uncertain, waiting for permission. Angela looked conflicted.

“Remember patience is the greatest thing,” she tried, smiling smugly.

“Now, patience; and remember patience is the _great_ thing…” Moira corrected.

She retracted her hands slowly and swore Angela looked disappointed, frustrated, to be robbed of her touch, despite her own decision on the matter. She leaned up on her chair, to pull Moira’s face down to hers, and kissed her again.

“You’re going to murder me,” Moira told her with a note of amusement in her voice.

“What?”

“The Prague conference.”

“Shit.” She frowned. “You leave tonight?”

“This afternoon.”

Angela was playing with the third button of her shirt, not meeting her eyes, thinking.

“I’ll be back on the 2nd.” She counted on the fingers she had against Angela’s thigh now, and the gentle pressure made her shift, made her lick her lips. “Friday.”

Angela sighed and straightened in her chair and turned away from Moira to play with the papers lying on the desk. She squared them in a neat pile, and then ruffled its corners.

“You should get some sleep while you still can,” she told her. “Things shouldn’t be too busy in the lab today. We made good progress tonight.”

“We certainly did.”

Moira disentwined their legs and stood from her seat. She paused to skim her fingers against the shell of Angela’s ear, as though tucking back a stray piece of her hair, and then let her touch glance down to the back of her neck. Angela stood still.

“Worried you won’t be able to focus if I stay?”

Angela huffed. “Worried you’ll collapse from fatigue at the airport—eat something, by the way.”

“I do have _something_ in mind now, but—”

“Don’t say it.” Amusement distorted the intended sternness of her words. She was trying not to laugh.

Moira did laugh, though, a chuffing sound, and her lips stretched wide with a grin. Her hand left Angela and found a home in the pocket of her trousers, the ones with the broken zipper.

Perhaps it wasn’t a terrible idea to make herself scarce before the rest of staff trickled in to see her ‘less than put together’, as Angela had put it.

“I’ll see you Friday, then?”

She had already started walking away from the desk when she heard Angela turn to look at her. A hand onto her arm stopped her in her tracks.

Angela pulled her down to taste her lips again, slow and hungry at the same time, a promise for later. Moira felt dumb for having ever doubted Angela’s interest, what with the way she tangled her fingers in her hair and drew her in close and slipped her tongue easily into her mouth.

She left the lab and fell asleep with the warm feeling of being wanted settled over her chest, thankful for some idiot’s neglect of lab safety measures.

* * *

Moira remembered being twenty-seven and needing for her obstinacy to be loud, before she had learned it could be quiet. Angela was maybe too much like her at times. It explained why they dug their heels in the sand to see who might move first, even if it sometimes meant sinking in place. But there was none of that game when they spent the night of the 2nd in her office 

It almost surprised her, how _eager_ Angela was, and how unhesitant she was to show it.

She shed her pants on the floor before coaxing Moira back against the couch and climbing onto her lap, not a second wasted. She made to undo the buttons of her own shirt, already halfway there by the time Moira’s long fingers circled her wrists to pull her hands away.

“In a rush?”

A small part of her worried that Angela was hasteful so that she wouldn’t have to see. So that she wouldn’t have to think, because that made shutting her out and imagining someone else, anyone else, much harder.

But Angela _was_ looking at her—wouldn’t take her eyes off her. With evident self-restraint, she relented, and Moira’s thoughts eased. She was hungry, that was all, starving for her attention.

“Sorry. It’s been a while. I’m just…”

“In a state,” Moira finished, lips curling into a smile.

“You could say.”

Angela let her unfasten the last few buttons of her shirt. What should have been an easy task was rendered much harder by all the distracting open-mouthed kisses pressed against Moira’s jaw.

When the last button came loose, she pulled back for Moira to drink in the sight of her.

Her bra was black, mostly sheer lace hugging the ample roundness of her breasts, hardly thick enough to hide her nipples, pink as rose petals.

Of course Angela had put on underwear to match, too. Moira nearly lost all train of coherent thought, and her throat went dry. Her gaze roamed freely, betrayed her want, but she was patient with her hands, skirting the dip of her waist and the curve of her ribs, playing with the band of her bra.

Angela was even softer than she’d imagined, full in all the right places. Strong lines where she tensed at the passing of her touch betrayed the muscle hiding beneath her gentle curves. Moira wanted every part of her under her lips, all at once.

But before she could turn the thought to action, Angela was pressing up against her. And that might have been better than anything she would’ve thought to do, overwhelmed as she was—feeling her breasts, through her shirt, against her own. She was glad she hadn’t worn a bra today. The fabric brushed against her under Angela’s warm weight.

Her hands found Moira’s hair, and her mouth found Moira’s own, and her hips bore down against Moira’s lap. She nipped and bit and sucked between sloppy kisses, between passes of their tongues together.

In the lab last weak, she’d been all sleepy touches. Now, her hands grabbed and pulled, urgent and eager.

She gasped and finally paused for breath when Moira’s hands wrapped around her thighs, nails gripping into the softness there before moving up to her ass.

“Is this standard dress code for Head of Medical?”

Angela arched as she ran a single nail up the curve of her spine. Moira’s fingers found the clasp of her bra and made quick work of it.

“Or is this all—” She slipped the straps gently over her shoulders, couldn’t help but stare when the flimsy fabric fell away, and then just barely brushed her touch against the swell of her breasts. Her gaze shifted up to hold Angela’s again. “Just for me?”

The color that rose in Angela’s cheeks was as good an answer as any. Moira laughed, low and chiming at once, and kissed her.

“Beautiful,” she assured her.

She felt Angela gasp against her mouth when the pads of her thumbs found her nipples. She played with them and Angela moaned, shuddered beneath her hands, began rocking her hips over her lap.

Moira took her time with every teasing touch—a caress just blow her navel, fingertips tracing the edges of her hips, nails scratching lightly up the insides of her thighs, lips sealed against her throat. Angela’s sounds were soft and needy. She tried to press herself to Moira, to grind against her, seeking friction.

But Moira only ever played with the edge of her panties, so thin and light at the sides, she was certain she could tear them to shreds if she wanted.

Her hands wandered incessantly as she mapped in her mind every inch of her that was sensitive. But, maddeningly, purposefully, she avoided where Angela ached most to be touched.

Teasing her, testing her patience, was and always had been a guilty pleasure.

Angela tugged sharply at Moira’s hair when she, for the third time now, traced the soft lines at the apex of her thighs only to dance away again. A noise of frustrated disapproval, which she must have meant to come off far more cautionary than it did, caught at the back of her throat. Moira hissed at the pull of fingers fisting close to her scalp.

“Are you really going to make me ask you to fuck me?”

Moira laughed, all low tones. “I’m just pacing myself. Enjoying a good thing.”

Angela’s hand was still hard in her hair, but her pupils were blown wide and her breathing came in fast. Moira smirked.

“But you _can_ ask, if you’d like.” Her hands stroked up her hips to hold her about the waist. “I’d like that, now that I think on it.”

Angela kissed her hard, and then slowly she shifted to try and properly straddle only one of her thighs. Moira’s hands at her hips stilled her, stopped her short of pressing herself down. But Angela’s efforts were unabated—doubled, even—by the denial. If she planned on testing self-control, on seeing who would give first, Moira wasn’t sure she’d win out this time.

Certainly not with Angela’s knee between her legs. Moira tried to bite back a groan, but of course Angela noticed, and she smiled, sliding even closer. Moira’s restraint was cracking.

And she nearly felt it crumble when she realized Angela was already soaking through her panties. She was making a mess of herself, and of Moira’s trousers, where she rubbed against them. With every slide of her hips, back and forth, she could feel her warmth, even through the fabric. They were one of her favorite pairs of pants, but she couldn’t care less.

The sight of Angela dripping onto her made her keenly aware of her own arousal, and she couldn’t help imagining what it might feel like, with less between them, to have Angela’s heat pressed against her own.

The insides of Angela’s thighs were all slick by the time Moira trailed up to touch them again. She spread the wetness there over her skin, coating her, impossibly close to her lips, but never quite meeting them.

“You’re drenched.”

Angela made a small noise. She grabbed her hand, then, to keep her from pulling away, and guided it closer to her still, never letting go of her gaze. Moira obliged, finally, and pulled the fabric aside to brush the back of two knuckles against her.

Angela let out a shaky breath. Wetness dripped from her lips, made her glisten, clung to Moira’s fingers in thick strings when she drew her hand back.

“Damn it— _please_ ,” she whined, holding onto her harder. She brought her in the rest of the way, until Moira’s fingers glided properly between the slick warmth of her, and gasped. Moira almost gasped with her. “Please.” Breathier. And then she hummed when Moira moved. “God, yes. Just like that.”

Moira laughed again, with less composed confidence than before, rich and affected.

Two of her fingers slid easily into Angela, hot and ready from being so worked up, and finally her wrist was set free. The sound Angela made as she sunk into her, high and pretty, lost itself in the crook of Moira’s neck when she fell against her. With every push of her hips back, trying to take more, her breathing grew ragged, uneven.

“You’re ridiculous, you know that?” Angela managed, panting. Her words were almost lost on a moan when Moira crooked her fingers inside her just right. She mumbled something so broken Moira couldn’t tell whether it was meant to be English or German.

She might have had a comeback if only the way Angela whimpered close to her neck, the way she rode her lap, the way she glided and tightened around her fingers, didn’t make her mind go blank. She could feel her dripping down freely against the palm of her hand, spreading messily where she rubbed her.

And she was getting close already. Moira could tell by the stutter of her hips and the catch of her breath and the fingers stilled in her hair and the way her body tensed.

She slipped her hand out from between Angela’s legs before she could come, feeling her trying to clench down on her fingers as she pulled them out. Angela made a plaintive sound of disapproval at being left empty and her teeth found the smooth column of Moira’s neck, where she bit just a little too hard.

Her hand flew to her own clit. She pressed down and began rubbing small circles against herself, but Moira stopped her as soon as she realized what she was doing. Her grip was firm, strong about her wrist.

“I’m so close,” she whined.

“I know, angel.” The endearment made Angela pause and the softness of it made her flush possibly more than she’d already been flushing. Moira’s hands found the back of her thighs, and, quicker than Angela could process, she lifted her off her lap and placed her down to lie on the couch. “I’m not finished with you yet.”

She wanted to taste her, to make her come on her lips.

There wasn’t all that much room to navigate on a couch of this size, but Moira managed to slot herself between Angela’s legs. She braced herself over her, hovering, and leaned down to capture her lips with her own. Angela lifted her hips to slide her underwear off, and once it was gone, wrapped her thighs about Moira’s waist to try and draw her closer.

When Moira scooted down to kiss her chest, and took one of her nipples into her mouth, she hummed. And when Moira’s hand brushed between her legs again, teasing, the hum turned to something breathy.

She bit her lip as Moira’s attention grew more insistent, raised the back of her hand up to her face to muffle herself.

Moira stopped and propped herself up again. She took Angela’s hand gently and pulled it from her face to hold it by her head, against the couch. Their fingers laced together, their eyes met, and they stilled that way for several heartbeats, open and intimate. Moira’s free hand stroked the side of Angela’s face before moving to brush her rosy lips, slightly parted, with her thumb. Angela kissed the tip of it slowly, and Moira felt her heart skip in her chest.

And then she took her finger into her mouth, and Moira watched, transfixed. She felt herself grow wetter with every gentle suck of Angela’s lips. But—she needed to focus. She drew her hand away before she became irreversibly distracted.

“I want to hear you,” she told her. “Those lovely sounds you make—I want to hear them when I make you come.”

The blue of Angela’s eyes thinned as her pupils dilated impossibly more than they already had, and Moira swore she felt the reverberations of a small, uncontrolled shiver running down her spine. But Angela tried a smile anyways, provoking as she could make it. “Still waiting for you to deliver on that last bit.”

Moira rose. She disentwined their hands to let both of hers rove over Angela’s body. They were stronger than before, though still gentle, and the way they paused to hug her breasts, her waist, the flare of her hips, was almost possessive.

“Beautiful… perfect as you are, Angela,” she mused, “You deserve nothing less than my complete, deliberate attention.” 

She sunk her fingers into her again as she spoke, and Angela flushed—at the compliment, or at the feeling of being filled again, or at both. She cried out when Moira drew out only to push in deeper. Her fingers were longer than she was used to. She resisted the urge to hide her face behind her hand again.

Moira pushed Angela’s knees up so that she’d draw them up against her chest, and then bent down to pepper kisses along the insides of her thighs.

“I’ve wanted you like this for so long,” she said, even as her fingers went on fucking her. “So willing for me.”

Angela was so wet Moira could see it beading between her lips, close to the hood of her clit. Moira spread her slowly with her free hand, gently massaging. This close, she could see her throbbing around her knuckles when she pushed in deep, she could savor the smell of her.

“How long have you thought of this?” Moira asked. “How often do you think of me when you touch yourself?”

She stuck her tongue out to press against the soft wetness of her petals, short and slow. Angela gasped. She tasted musky but clear and almost sweet, and Moira stilled her lips against her clit in a gentle kiss before she pulled away with a soft wet noise.

Angela arched when she lapped at her again, this time stronger, greedier, parting her. “God— _Moira_.” She said her name easily, almost like she was used to saying it on a shaky breath. It was the most beautiful thing Moira had ever heard. “That feels good.”

Every time she closed her lips against her, Angela gasped, and when she settled into a regular rhythm, light flicks of her tongue between long, soft strokes, Angela’s legs trembled, and when she curled her fingers up into her, Angela mumbled broken, senseless prayers. Her hips twitched and met her every thrust.

She was so tight around Moira’s fingers, drawing them deeper into her every time she throbbed. Moira’s lips closed fully around her clit. She sucked it gently against her tongue, and Angela cried out, and her back arched, and her hands, fisted into Moira’s hair, held her steady against her.

Moira’s fingers never ceased their rhythm inside of her as she came. Her mouth never pulled away as Angela pulsed and gushed against her lips—so much wet, it dripped against Moira’s face and down her chin, and trickled down her fingers, past her wrist.

Angela called out her name and Moira felt the sound of it pluck at strings inside her chest.

She stayed inside her a while after she finished, waiting for Angela to relax again. She counted the beat of her heart against her fingertips as she slowly loosened around her.

When she sat up, she made a show of licking Angela’s arousal off from where it had webbed between her fingers, from where it had run off down her hand. She was still breathing hard, totally flushed, and her eyes were soft. Before Moira could lean down to kiss her smile, Angela rose instead. Her hands found the collar of Moira’s shirt and she used it as leverage to help pull herself up. Her kiss was soft and deep.

“Thank you.” Voice quiet, relaxed and content. Her taste was still very much on Moira’s lips and she said, somewhat embarrassed, “Sorry I made such a mess.”

“The best compliment one could receive.”

Moira settled back onto the couch properly, and Angela followed until she was in her lap again. She held her close in her afterglow. She’d never seen Angela look so relaxed before, had never seen the particular easy set of her shoulders when all tension was washed away. Her hair was all mussed and she was stunning.

She leaned in close on Moira’s lap, one hand pressed against her sternum, the other to her shoulder, and kissed her again. It was warm and relaxed and perfect, and made Moira’s heart flutter.

When Angela’s attention shifted to the buttons of her shirt that were still fastened, Moira faltered. She undid a single one of them, and that was as far as she got, because Moira stopped her, taking hold of her hands.

“You don’t have to.”

Angela studied her a while. She held her gaze before dropping it, to look at her lips, and then picking it back up again.

“I’d like to,” she said simply, but her tone wasn’t pushy.

Moira felt color rise in her cheeks. Angela came closer, this time to push back the edge of Moira’s collar a little, so she could place a kiss just where her shoulder met her neck. She worked her way up to her ear slowly, so as to give Moira time to marinate on the idea.

Angela was twenty-seven, young and perfect, and Moira was nearing forty—but no, that wasn’t it, not really. It’d just been so long since she’d shared herself with anyone, since she’d let anyone so close. And Angela was possibly the first person she was attracted to, interested in, in any way that was substantial, that she knew could easily be more than temporary.

“Let me make you feel good,” Angela said between the wet kisses she pressed close to her ear. It was too easy to imagine where else her mouth might make those sounds against her.

If she hadn’t been blushing before, she certainly was now. She swallowed away her nerves. Her hands let go of Angela’s and found the next button of her own shirt. She was glad they weren’t shaky as she undid it, and even gladder when Angela insisted on taking over once it’d slipped free.

Angela pushed the ends apart as they came loose. Moira tensed just a bit, but remained still, resigning herself to letting Angela do with her as she pleased. Her heart was hammering. Angela’s lips felt impossibly hot as she kissed a trail down, over the constellations of freckles on her shoulders, and past the delicate edge of her collarbone.

Moira made the smallest sound, an intake of breath, when Angela’s hands rose to palm at her chest. She played with her nipples, testing, and Moira couldn’t help but shift and squirm under her fingers. Angela smiled mischievously, pleased to find her so sensitive, but remained gentle nonetheless.

If her hands felt good, Angela’s mouth felt even better. Moira whimpered finally when she took one of her nipples between her lips and swirled her tongue against it. Her fingers tangled into soft blonde hair, and when Angela bit, Moira tugged her gently back, over-stimulated.

“Too much?”

“A bit.”

“Sorry.” She placed a kiss where she’d been too rough, and moved to the other side instead. All the little licks of her tongue made Moira tense all over again, and she choked on a sound at the back of her throat.

“Does it feel good?” Angela knew damn well, judging by her tone and the little smile she cast up, that it did, but Moira answered anyway.

“Yes.” Her breath was already coming in uneven.

It was almost ridiculous, the amount of attention Angela was paying her. She kissed the undersides of her breasts, and didn’t stop there—Moira was certain, by the time she reached her navel, that her mouth hadn’t missed a single inch of her, that her hands hadn’t neglected a caress anywhere. It was as though she was trying to commit every stretch of her skin to memory.

No one had ever touched her this way before. Angela was worshipping her body; there was no other word for it. Because she was eager, because wanted to, because she liked her enough to do so. The thought alone made emotion seize Moira by the throat.

And then Angela was properly kneeling between her legs, licking and kissing softly at the skin just above her beltline as her fingers worked against the buckle. Moira’s mind went blank. Had she not been dripping against herself since the moment Angela had straddled her lap, then the sight of her between her knees certainly would have done it.

Her chest was heaving gently when Angela pulled down the zipper of her pants, looking at her the whole while. She seemed to wait for a moment, to see if she’d tell her to stop, but Moira’s hand reaching out to gently brush a strand of hair away from her face was encouragement enough to keep going.

She lifted her hips for Angela to pull away both her pants and underwear in a single motion, and then kicked them across the floor along with her shoes. Her legs were almost awkwardly long, and visibly pale even in the dim blue light cast by the lamps and monitors in the office, but Angela didn’t seem to mind. Starting at the inside of her knee—the touch there made Moira jump a little, surprisingly sensitive—she skimmed her lips ever closer to her center.

Moira thought she might tease, in retaliation for what she’d done to her earlier, but Angela was merciful.

She let out a breath she hadn’t been consciously holding the instant Angela found her. Her mouth was warm and wet, and the way she looked up at her when she licked her clit ever so lightly—Moira was certain she was trying to kill her.

“God, you taste so good.” She pulled back just enough for Moira to see the sheen of her arousal coating her lips—full and soft, always such a lovely shade of pink. They kissed and worked against her again, and Moira couldn’t help the sounds that left her, still quieter than Angela’s had been, but quickly growing higher.

She was completely flushed. Pretty patches of red bloomed unevenly over her shoulders and her chest, and the blush on her cheeks spread to the tips of her ears.

Angela’s hands wrapped around her thighs, both to steady her when she trembled, and to keep her close. Her tongue slipped inside her and the feeling made Moira gasp. Her fingers tangled in her hair, and she tried to be gentle, but her whole body was tense, wound like a spring. She gripped her harder, pulled her face closer, and held her there to grind down against her mouth.

Angela hummed and let Moira guide her back up to her clit. And there her lips were again, kissing and sucking with just the right amount of pressure to make Moira a breathy, whining mess as she rolled her hips against Angela’s face.

“Fuck.”

Angela’s perfect pace faltered only because she couldn’t help herself from smiling. But then she was back at it, tongue and lips stroking her in a slow steady pattern. It was so slick between them, and every time Angela seemed to try and lick it all up, she only made it wetter.

Moira finally felt herself unravel at the steady pulse of Angela sucking her into her mouth. “God— _Angela_.” She peaked over her name, cried it out as she let the tension in her body go. And Angela didn’t break pace for a second, even when her hips jerked against her.

She held her still as best she could under her hands, and Moira made a strangled sound when she didn’t halt her attention. Lips still around her clit, she never stopped drawing her in, suckling softly, keeping a pressure that was hardly there, but just enough.

Moira gasped, and stuttered something that hardly formed a proper word. She was so sensitive. It was easy for Angela to make her come a second time. Her back arched and her legs shook and her voice was unrestrained and breathy.

Angela kissed her just once more, and then again after Moira let go of her, and then she wiped her face with the back of her hand before crawling back up onto the couch. Moira’s eyes closed as she tried to regain her bearings, and she hummed, low and sated, when Angela placed a kiss against the sharp line of her cheekbone.

“You’re rather good at that.” She opened her eyes and smirked at her, gaze falling to her lips without being able to help it.

Angela raised an eyebrow and played with the collar of her shirt, as though trying to fix it, even though it was the only thing she wore, completely unbuttoned. “ _Rather_ good? I’m not counting orgasms or anything, but it sounded like it might’ve been on the order of _very_ good, at least.”

“At least,” Moira agreed, amused.

“Should I be insulted you sound surprised?”

“No.” She laughed, mostly at herself, and then decided to clue Angela in, “I just can’t believe myself. Ever thinking you were straight.”

Angela humphed, but she was smiling, and remained quiet as she nestled close.

The air in the office started to feel cold now that they weren’t preoccupied, but Moira held Angela about the waist, and Angela leaned her head against her shoulder, and the proximity was enough to stave the chill off. Moira knew there was a blanket somewhere in the room, because she slept on the couch often between shifts, but didn’t care enough to bother looking for it.

It was late, anyways. She didn’t have to look at the clock to know that it was much later than it felt—dreaded reading the time for that very reason. The itch to get to work again slowly crept into her bones.

She was first to stand, finally, and Angela stayed on the couch to put her clothes back on while she collected her own from where she’d pushed them across the floor. Her shirt wasn’t very badly wrinkled, and would look fine once she tucked it in properly. She looked around for her tie, knew Angela had loosened it for her before they’d made it to the couch—

“Here.” She approached her with the tie held between her fingers.

Moira bent down to let her string it around her neck as she zipped up her pants. Angela quietly watched her rebutton her shirt and then knot her tie with practiced ease. When she looked up to meet her eyes, Moira winked, and it made Angela’s cheeks warm and her smile widen.

Hands on her waist, Angela tiptoed to kiss her. Moira wondered if it was so normal to grow so comfortable with someone so quickly, or if there was just something about Angela that was special. It was unsurprising, though—there probably wasn’t anyone else in her life at the moment that she was so willing to trust. She’d wanted this, and now a tentative part of her hoped it might become a regularity.

“Thank you for letting me…” Angela said softly.

“My pleasure.”

She rolled her eyes, but smiled before she went on kissing her.

Moira swore she was getting wet all over again as their tongues brushed together and as their breathing grew uneven. She wondered if Angela was, too.

When they pulled apart, Moira’s cheeks had pinked. Angela traced the color with her thumbs before her hands shifted down, to her neck, over her shoulders, and settled against her chest, just bellow her collar.

“You’re gorgeous,” Angela told her, and Moira felt her heart melt.


	6. 2067

Except for the sound of pages flipped every so often and the even ebb of Angela’s breathing, it was quiet in Moira’s apartment. Angela’s head lay nestled against her chest where she’d lain to rest —spent from coming with Moira’s fingers inside her, with Moira’s mouth against the back of her neck. She slept soundly now, under the blanket she’d draped over them both.

Too unbothered to sit up or do any real amount of work, Moira had reached for the stack of papers she’d abandoned on the coffee table when Angela had distracted her in the first place. And now she sat, reading them over, making mental notes for the next time she held a pen in hand.

There was too much to do lately.

Moments of peace, of silence and comfort uninterrupted, were few and far between. Even when it was just the two of them, she and Angela, holed away in her apartment, the rest of the world didn’t drown out like it used to. Work shadowed them home—not that it hadn’t always, but it coiled around their throats in their sleep, too.

Blackwatch sealed her lips, and some days, she wasn’t sure who that bothered more. She missed running all her ideas by Angela, and it hurt Angela not to be confided in.

“It’s ridiculous,” she’d say. “I’m Head of Medical.”

“Take it up with Reyes,” was always her answer.

Some times that worked, but others, Angela wasn’t so easily appeased, and dug the personal out from the professional. “I won’t tell anyone, I won’t even say anything. You know you can trust me.”

It wasn’t a matter of trust. Moira trusted her with most everything. She knew, though, that there were some things Angela would never let go, would never keep quiet about, once they were brought to her attention. Blackwatch was built in part to keep angels in the dark, and that gave her freedom with her research that she wasn’t prepared to give up.

So, when pressed, she would answer the same, “I trust you, angel. It’s simply out of my hands.” Which wasn’t a lie.

But quiet days, quiet moments, when they found them, weren’t soured by the stress and disagreements yet, and for that, Moira was thankful. When Angela slept soundly between her arms, Moira realized how badly her muscles tensed, and her breathing shallowed, and her head ached, in the absence of Angela’s soothing proximity.

She took great care not to wake her—knew she was missing on rest—but she’d always been a light sleeper, and it happened without her doing eventually. Angela stirred and her head bobbed as she tried to remember where she’d dozed off. Moira leaned her head down to press her lips against her hair, not quite a kiss.

“How long did I sleep?” Her voice was heavy.

It couldn’t have been more than an hour.

“Not long. I would have woken you.”

Angela hummed and tried to stretch, pressing back against Moira, and once she’d finished, collected the blanket close to her chest again. Moira still held her notes before her, limbs all folded over Angela, who read along with her for a few long moments.

“I meant to ask you, before—about my paper. Did you get to read it?” she asked.

Moira tensed. She’d known the question would come eventually.

“I did.”

“And?”

Moira dropped her hands and stretched to set the papers back down against the coffee table, then curled herself around Angela again.

“Can we talk about it later?”

Angela turned in her arms to look at her.

“Why not now?”

“Because. I’d like not to argue right now.” Angela fixed her with a look, and Moira had to train her gaze away.

“It’s off to a great start…” she tried.

“Please.”

“Angela. You already know what I’m going to say,” she tried to keep her voice soft, reasonable. It would be one of the same fights they always had lately. Angela’s research was too timid. Moira never held back on the truth—told her she was wasting her potential, her genius, her talent, her hard work—but Angela refused to hear it.

Which was a shame, because she was _so close_ with this. Almost nothing could rewrite the world’s rules for the better like resurrection could, and if Angela just pushed her practical theory on regeneration, applied herself the right way—but Moira knew any amount of convincing, if there was any to be had at all, was a delicate matter. She didn’t want Angela to give up on anything just yet, knew Blackwatch would open its doors to something so promising.  

“Later,” Moira insisted.

Angela studied her, and Moira could see in her eyes that she was weighing the merits of arguing about it.

“Fine. Later,” she agreed finally, and Moira relaxed again.

Her hold loosened as Angela made to sit up, and the blanket fell to her lap, bunched about her hips. It had been hundreds, thousands of times, but Angela was no less breathtaking every time she laid eyes on her. Always so distracting.

“Are you leaving?” She didn’t know whether she planned on staying the night.

“No.”

Angela found her hand where it rested against the couch and squeezed it in her own before standing. She tossed the blanket haphazardly back over Moira’s legs.

“I’m going to have a shower.”

Moira watched the graceful curve of her spine, the delicate lines of her shoulders, and the natural sway of her hips, as she walked off towards the bathroom just down the hallway.

“I’ll join you in a minute.”

“Oh? Were you invited?”

She’d paused a second at the threshold of the living room to look back at her over her shoulder, and Moira didn’t need to see the expression on her face, that sly little smile that touched her eyes more than it did her mouth, to confirm the teasing edge in her voice.

“Didn’t know I needed an invitation into _my_ shower.”

But Angela was already turning off into the bathroom.

Moira picked up the papers she’d abandoned on the table and read to the bottom of the page without really absorbing the words there, reading the same sentences over and over again, waiting for the sound of water to start running. Once Angela had been in the shower for a couple of minutes, and no more than that, she stopped pretending to read and stood from the couch.

The hardwood flooring creaked in the same place it always did halfway down the hallway, loud enough to give away her approach. She pushed the door open, because it hadn’t been fully shut, and the warm steam that had started fogging the mirror clung to all the little hairs on her skin when she walked inside.

She stepped in around the glass to join her under the water. It was hot. Angela always liked her showers that way, but it never bothered Moira enough for her to insist on turning down the temperature.

Her hands found Angela’s hips, and she pulled her close, so that her back was flush against her front, and then wrapped her arms around her. She’d already washed, but hadn’t rinsed off entirely, so her skin was all slippery where they came together.  

“Trying to steal my soap?”

“Mm.”

Moira loosened her hold to glide her hands up along the dip of her waist, and then up around her ribs to settle on her chest. Angela stiffened under her fingers despite the heat of the water. She hummed when Moira placed a kiss to her shoulder.

She did a poor job of sounding displeased when Moira turned her and backed her against the tiled wall. She slotted her leg between her thighs as she went on playing with the way the soap still clung all slick to her skin. Her hands wandered briefly between her legs, and then found her backside, pulling her closer against her thigh.

Angela made a small noise, a subtle difference in her breathing.

“We said no shower sex after that time—”

“I know.” Moira’s answer was quick, but she had decency enough to blush. They’d both born bruises for days afterwards. “I was just admiring.”

“With your hands?”

Angela’s smile was warm, warm as the touch about Moira’s waist that kept her from pulling away.

“With my hands, yes.”

She stretched up and Moira bent her head down to meet her halfway for a kiss. Moira closed her eyes and focused on the feel of Angela, the warmth of her against the cool tiles, and the faint pressure of water drumming against her side. It had been too long since they’d last done this—too many nights spent in labs at opposite ends of headquarters, and too few spent in her apartment together.

When Angela let her go, Moira stepped back under the showerhead to wet her hair. She let the water fall down over her face, and then pushed her fringe back from where it stuck against her forehead. She watched Angela pick up a bottle of shampoo off the shelf. She squeezed out a generous dollop into the palm of her hand, and reached for Moira’s hair rather than slather it in her own.

Moira stepped out of the water’s way to accommodate her, leaning down slightly so that she could reach well enough to scrub suds against her scalp. Angela’s touch was always so gentle. Moira felt tension leave her shoulders and unwind from her spine as she washed her hair.

“It’s gotten longer,” Angela commented, fingers tangling against the back of her head, then tracing soothingly behind her ears.

“Mm. I’ll cut it soon. So you can play with the short bits.”

Angela’s smile was full of mischief when she moved to comb her hands through the longer strands. She grew concentrated, biting the edge of her lip as she began sculpting them into shape.

Moira took the opportunity to reach around Angela, grab at the shampoo bottle she’d set down, and soap her hair up, too. It didn’t seem to distract Angela from her work much.

“Satisfied?” she asked when Angela finally pulled away.

She nodded.

“I gave you horns.”

Moira couldn’t see them, but they curled towards her temples just as the headpiece of her Valkyrie suit did.

“I’d give you a halo to match, angel. But I’ve a feeling that might be too elaborate.”

She could pay Angela much better attention now that her own hair wasn’t being played with. Moira massaged her scalp with the tips of her fingers until her hair was all frothy white. She carefully swept away a cloud of soap from her brow with her thumb when it dipped too close to her eye, but Angela didn’t flinch whatsoever, relaxed as she was under her ministrations.

They took turns rinsing out the soap from their hair under the water, and then Moira turned it off. Angela stepped out first to wrap a towel around herself before handing Moira one, too.

Moira rubbed it over her head and her hair came out a mess after, so she shook it about to let it fall naturally back into place.

“I don’t think you need to cut it very soon.”

Angela was looking at her through the mirror.

“Why? Do you like it better this way?”

The cut was still clean; she was hardly one ever to let it become shaggier than styling could fix, but she’d been letting more time stretch between haircuts lately, no thanks to her work schedule.

“I like it all ways—always, all ways.” Moira was looking at her own reflection, but she could see Angela’s smile out of the corner of her eye. And she could see her hand as it reached up to play with the strands at the back of her head, already on their way to drying. “You really have the nicest hair.”

Angela told her often how much she loved it—the warm red of it, and the way it feathered softly between her fingers.

Moira left her to the bathroom so that she could blow-dry her hair, and padded across the hallway to the bedroom, where she fished out fresh underwear and a fresh shirt from her dresser. The shower had relaxed her. Now that she was dressed and clean, she felt she could sleep.

The bed lured her in with its plumped pillows and blankets. She laid across it diagonally and closer her eyes, concentrating on slowing and deepening her breathing.

The hair drier eventually turned off, followed by the click of a light switch, and then Angela’s small footsteps as she made her way nearer. Moira watched her as she picked something out for herself among her things. She settled on a band shirt for a group that’d been popular in the early 2020s, before Moira had even been born. The print had been worn down by too many washes, but the fabric was still soft, and it fit Angela loosely, covering her almost to mid-thigh.

The mattress dimpled under her knees, and then her hands, as she crawled her way up to Moira’s face. She settled her weight against her, chest to chest, legs interlocked, and shifted a bit until she was comfortable. She buried her face in the crook of Moira’s neck, and, after sneaking her hands up under her shirt just to feel her softness, Moira hugged her.

“Don’t fall asleep yet.”

“I won’t.”

It was too early in the evening still, not that she had any semblance of a regular sleep pattern. She regretted not napping with Angela before.

“We should order in. Unless you wanted to cook.”

“The fridge is basically empty.”

Cooking together—that was something she missed, too, something they hardly found the time for anymore.

“Indian?”

“Sure.”

It was quiet for several long minutes. Moira could count a heartbeat where their bodies met—hers, Angela’s, she couldn’t be certain. They relaxed and breathed in sync. But Angela’s fingers played idly with the sleeve of Moira’s shirt, a giveaway that she was still busy churning ideas through her head.

Moira almost expected her to bring up her research again, to propose they talk about the paper over dinner, but she didn’t.

Angela let the quiet rest.

The moment she let out a long breath, Moira knew she’d decided to let the subject go for the night, and a new wave of comfort settled over them both with it pushed out of the way. Moira’s hand rose to play through her hair. The touch made Angela hum and relax more heavily against her.

A deep peace was seated between them. It lived there always, even when they fought or lost their patience. Its roots tangled deep and tied them intimately together, the way profound understanding and affection would. It couldn’t be unwoven, would have to be severed if ever they fell apart, would leave them with phantom pains long after amputation.

Moira worried, lately.

“Angela.” Her name fell between a statement and a question.

“Mm?”

Moira swallowed. She’d confessed it before, but only to herself. The times she’d murmured it into Angela’s neck or into her hair, in words Angela couldn’t understand—those didn’t count.

She would never forgive herself if the worst happened, if they came to an end, without her ever having mustered up the courage to tell her.

“I love you.”

The phrase sounded odd to her ears, unspectacular, and it felt even odder against her lips, clumsy. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d said it to anyone. She’d never meant it so much. Her heart pounded in her chest as she waited for Angela to do or say anything in response.

When she started to push herself up, Moira felt caged. She berated herself for having said it, dreaded the look that might be on Angela’s face, anticipated the tension that would rise out of Angela’s silence. She’d cornered herself.

But Angela’s eyes were soft, her voice gentle, and her touch tender.

“I love you, Moira.”

She said it so effortlessly. Moira almost laughed, a sound of relief, and she was smiling. How easy it’d been. She wasn’t one to cry, neither of them were, but in that moment, she certainly felt that she could if she thought too long on everything that existed between them.

Angela embraced her. She held her face between her hands and brought their lips together, and Moira tried to express all that she felt with warm kisses. Angela offered her every affection, all her patience and care, to Moira. That let Moira hope, in the face of everything threatening to tear them apart, that she would be able to return the same for a very long time still.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading guys! Hope you liked it/the chapters all felt cohesive in the end. This isn't usually the kind of story I'd think to write for fic purposes, but I've had fun sharing it.


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